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Saturday, December 31, 2011

If I don't wake up tomorrow morning, it's probably because I will have entered a candy-induced coma. I haven't had candy since 27 December 2010. I've spent the last year stockpiling some favorites in preparation for 2012. Here's what I've got on hand for tonight after midnight:

Toffifee is readily available at any store here. If you haven't ever had Toffifee, you haven't lived. Try it, it's good. Good & Plenty came in a package from my mom sometime in September. The Chocoa was a gift from a friend for Christmas. The peanut butter cups are only available at Carrefour around Christmas time, so I bought a bag a few weeks ago and then hid it from Jeremy. The toff-chocs or whatever were actually supposed to be for a friend (she was looking for Da'im but IKEA was out), but she ended up not needing them so I gladly kept them. The mentos are from Turkey. Yes, Turkey - I've never seen those flavors before so I bought them in Goreme and then put them out of sight in my underwear drawer for lo, these five months. The only thing I'm missing is York peppermint patties. I know they have them at the Hershey store in Dubai Mall, so a trip there may be in my (imminent) future.

I'm going to keep the "sweets on Friday only" rule for 2012, and I'm sure I'll remember pretty quickly how candy really only tastes good at the moment you're eating it, but hoo boy, am I going to have fun tonight!!!!!

Thursday, December 29, 2011

As promised, here are my ten favorite books of 2011. To make the list, I had to have read the book for the first time in 2011 - otherwise the list would be crowded with old favorites I re-read. Links are to my Goodreads reviews. Sorry for the huge spacing. I have no idea why it came out that way. Just pretend it increases the drama.

This is another book that was just my style. I could hardly stand the suspense, even though I already knew the eventual ending. The journey was just so dang fun. Warning: you WILL find yourself on YouTube after reading this book, looking up all the races.

Yet another deeply personal book. If you have spent more than a few years in grad school, or are married to someone who has, then this book might be worth a read. If you are looking for grand, dramatic plots...not so much.

No one is more surprised than me that I liked this book. I stand by my original review: "Hush doesn't take itself seriously. It knows exactly what it is. It is very self-aware and hits all its marks. It reminded me so much of those Hardy Boys books where the mystery is kind of cheesy and obvious and the bad guys are always bursting into monologue before killing anyone and the hero/ine makes foolish, unrealistic decisions in order to advance the plot, but it's done in kind of a "wink, wink" way so all is forgiven."

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Today when I dropped her off at school, Magdalena begged me to let her ride her scooter home later that day. So when it was time to pick her up, Miriam (who is on winter break right now) got on her scooter and together we walked to the school. I was carrying Magdalena's scooter and also holding the leash of our foster dog. Did I mention we have another foster dog this year? Her name is Judy.

She's a rescued street dog, just like Snowflake was, so her leash-walking skills are very poor. She zigzags all over the place and cuts you off like nobody's business. We were quite a spectacle walking to the school - a girl, a scooter, a mom, another scooter, and a dog. But that was nothing compared to the spectacle we were a few minutes later when, not 100 meters into the walk home, Magdalena decided she was too tired to ride her scooter. Then we were a girl, a scooter, a mom, a girl, a scooter, a backpack, and a dog. And one of the girls was crying.

There was really no choice but to just press on. Magdalena cried the whole way home and wanted me to carry her, which was physically impossible since I had Judy's leash in one hand and Magdalena's scooter in the other. It was the longest 800-meter walk home EVER and we made quite the spectacle of ourselves. The best part was when Judy zigzagged right in front of sad Magdalena and tripped her. Sigh.

But it turns out Magdalena really was tired, because a little later, this happened:

I submit that to fall asleep on the floor in the middle of playing, you have to be pretty dang tired. The end.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

I've been abroad - entirely in the Middle Eastern region - for close to 16 months straight now. In the last few weeks, I've started to feel more and more out of touch with American culture. I'm reading all the same news sources, talking with all the same friends, checking all the same blogs. And yet. I'm missing that certain something, that general, baseline knowledge of culture that is not acquired in any deliberate sense but is picked up almost through osmosis, just from being around Americans and listening and watching.

It's getting to the point where if I catch a glimpse of the United States on the news or a TV show, it already seems just a little bit foreign to me. Just a little. Like oooh, the sidewalk curbs aren't painted black and white there! It's almost like that time we went to Jordan for four months and when we came back, everyone in the US was saying "absolutely!" instead of "yes." It was sudden, inexplicable, and it happened while we were gone. Now that we've been "gone" for over a year, these little changes are racking up and I can't keep up with them all. I don't know who Tim Tebow is. I don't know what the rank and file really think about all this Occupy stuff, or about the Republican presidential candidates, for that matter. It's been ages since I heard anyone complain about gas prices in person. Today, just for the sake of forging a common bond with my fellow Americans, just to be in the know, I looked up the price of gas.

I felt a pang of...something (I'm not sure what) when I caught a glimpse of the most recent Good Housekeeping cover the other day. It was so AMERICAN, and ever so slightly so other. It was as if for the first time in my life I was able to take a step back from my own native culture and regard it from afar. All at once I could see what the world's perception of American culture is, which is difficult to do when you're immersed in it. And I have to say, I liked a lot of what I saw. America gets a lot of grief from other countries, but there is something so spunky and carefree and young and earnest about it, too.

America reminds me of these young Emiratis I teach, in a way. They're full of energy and relatively new to the world and until they learn otherwise (and they will), they believe there is nothing they can't achieve.

And that's how you know I've been in the Middle East too long, when I start comparing the US to Emirati youth. I'll stop now. My point is that I feel like I'm drifting away from essential cultural knowledge when it comes to the US. Who can fill me in on the minutiae I'm missing that I can't pick up from news and blogs and talking with other similarly disconnected expatriates?

Monday, December 26, 2011

I'm going to present my 2011 book data a little differently this year. Instead of putting the favorites in with the masses like I did in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, I'm going to give you the (loosely and probably inconsistently) categorized list of everything I read this year and do the favorites along with some fun distinctions in a few days. Here you go!

Friday, December 23, 2011

I've written about $800 strollers before, but this one takes it up a notch.

My students showed me this video that made the rounds in the Middle East (and beyond...?) a few years ago and it at once terrified me and impressed me. My Saudi students, on the other hand, were totally blasé about it - "oh, speed skating in sandals on the freeway? That was SO four years ago."

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

(Before reading this post, please note that I am currently on a grad school exemption from PregnancyWatch and adjust your conclusions accordingly.)

Is it totally weird that I am jealous of American women who give birth in foreign countries? Because I totally am. I've had a lot of great adventures in foreign countries, some of them even health- or hospital- or kid- or kid-in-hospital-related. But I've never had THE great adventure.

I feel so robbed that Miriam wasn't born in Syria. She was due in mid-September, and Jeremy's PhD program at the U of A started at the beginning of September, so it wasn't too hard to do the math and see that it wouldn't work to birth her in Damascus. Still, we thought through a few scenarios. None of them were possible, so we ended up just staying in Syria as long as possible and then moving to Arizona, where Miriam was born a month later. To this day, when people ask me where she was born, I have to think twice before answering, "Tucson." Miriam herself has told others that she was born in Syria. She also told me the other day that she is part Syrian. (Wishful thinking on her part to help her fit in more with the Arab kid crowd here, I think.)

And now the University of Sharjah just opened up their brand new hospital down the road, and it has a fabulous maternity ward (or so I've heard) and it seems like the majority of my friends are pregnant and I just get to thinking about what an adventure they're about to have. It's like a club that I don't belong to.

One more thing: I wonder sometimes if this strange jealousy I have is because I had such a terrible experience giving birth to Miriam in Tucson, and there will always, always be that question in my mind: how beautiful could it have been in Syria?

I guess I'll never know, and so the jealousy continues to eat away at me.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

I have five major assignments to turn in before the end of the semester in January. One is the bilingual program I described the other day. A couple of them are papers that I have worked on to varying degrees. When I'm not working on all this stuff, I'm exhibiting avoidance behaviors, which lately have taken the form of watching clips of the latest season of The Amazing Race on YouTube.

This surprises me, because I never thought I would like that show. Over the years, people have told me that I should watch it but the only episodes I ever caught glimpses of never sparked my interest. It seemed like it was just a bunch of people arguing with each other.

Until I had a bunch of research papers looming - then TAR was somehow riveting. I am really enjoying it, even though so many of the scenes remind me too much of stuff I've lived in real life. I hate hate hate that feeling of getting off a train after a night of crappy sleep and being hungry and you have to go to the bathroom but you don't have time because you have to get somewhere before a certain time but you have no idea where to go or where to even begin to find your way. It's stressful enough when you don't have a million dollars on the line.

Nobody give any spoilers for this season, please. I understand that it's already ended (?) and we'll see if I can get through the rest of the episodes without finding out who wins. As far as avoidance behaviors go, The Amazing Race is pretty dang enjoyable.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

It's time to turn a homework assignment into a blog post. This particular assignment was to design a bilingual English/Arabic education plan that a) develops proficiency in English and Arabic while b) preserving the national and cultural identity of the students.

You see, the fun thing about Arabic is that it's not just one language. It's one standard formal/media language that is learned almost as a foreign language even in schools in Arab countries, plus that country's dialect (this is called diglossia, remember?). Some dialects of Arabic are mutually unintelligible. That's why I sometimes go crazy with jealousy when I hear of someone moving to, say, Russia, and teaching their kids, say, Russian. It's so uncomplicated for them! Here, our kids play with Tunisians and Egyptians and Palestinians and Emiratis and for all intents and purposes, those kids all speak entirely different languages. It's maddening, from a language-learning point of view, because all that unstructured play time with native speakers of Arabic does very little to reinforce and promote the formal Arabic they learn in school.

So it was with particular relish that I set about completing my assignment to design a bilingual Arabic/English education program. The very first thing I did was decide to include an Arabic dialect component, rather than putting MSA (the formal stuff) on an unimpeachable pedestal. Because dangit, I want my kid to be able to play in Arabic, not just read poetry or listen to the news. In my bilingual education plan, MSA has its place in literacy and literature classes only. English gets literacy, science, and math (and yes, I know that this may cause students to harbor unrealized attitudes that assign English a more prestigious position in the language hierarchy because science and math are allocated to it, but the truth is that scientific and mathematical research is conducted in English these days). Arabic dialect gets social studies. Everybody's happy.

To that end, Jeremy and I recently engaged the services of an Arabic teacher for our girls. We're Levantine Arabic snobs so we found a young Syrian woman to come over and play with the kids (and a couple of neighbor girls) in Arabic. They don't do drills or write sentences or have any kind of systematic approach to learning Arabic - Miriam and Magdalena get that (via MSA) in school. The point is for them to use real-life, every day Arabic dialect to play and communicate on a child's level.

That's the solution we've found until a bilingual education program like the one I designed for my assignment exists in real life. And believe me, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

People Are Awesome. I showed this video to both of the classes I teach and they loved it beyond all reason. So do I, actually. [HT Jeremy's cousin on FB]

If any of your less-informed friends try to pass off Gingrich's "Palestinians are fake" line as genuine, here's an article you should read so you can be prepared to correct them in a polite and informed manner.

This article in the WSJ about Christmas card photos features some friends of mine from Portland. I saw their Christmas card before it appeared in the article and it is lovely.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

I can tell from the pile on my desk that the end of the semester is here.

I think the box of tissues gives it a little more heft and panache, don't you think? There's a second round of sickness going on these days so it's just as well the tissues are in my "to do" heap, just in case.

"The end of the semester" is going to last almost a whole month, though, so I have to ready myself for a race of endurance, not speed. I'm already trying to decide what book I'm going to read on January 13th to celebrate the end. Because on that day, unlike now, there will really, really be nothing else that I'm supposed to be reading or critiquing or teaching or analyzing. Until next semester starts, anyway.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

I'm going to be very, very oblique on the details of this incident, for obvious reasons. You see, I recently sent an email to the wrong person, causing me a lot of embarrassment, anguish, and and a constant refrain of "I am so STUPID!!!!" to echo through my head for the better part of a day. Those feelings (and even the refrain) have since subsided, but all I have to do is open up my inbox to feel the shame and humiliation come rushing back.

Basically, I needed to send an email to a group of people. I found a previous email exchange among that group of people and clicked on Reply All and then smugly and smartly edited the Subject line to what the new email was about. "How smart I am to change the Subject line," I thought, "I just hate it when people Reply All to old emails but leave the same old irrelevant subject."

Monday, December 12, 2011

Our 4-year-old neighbor broke his leg a few weeks ago and now spends a good deal of his time sitting in his wheelchair, broken leg propped up, looking out the window. Yesterday evening, the girls were outside playing and our front door was open. I walked from the living room to the kitchen, passing momentarily in front of the open doorway. Almost immediately, I heard a "Briiiiiiiiidgeeeeeeeeeet!"

It was our 4-year-old neighbor. He'd been watching. And he wanted to say hello to me.

The whole situation was so eerily reminiscent of Rear Window/Bart of Darkness that I had to laugh.

He gets his cast off in a couple more weeks. I'll have to make sure I don't do anything to arouse his suspicion before then.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Not long after the realization that I am an introvert changed my life, I discovered something else: I think parenting is harder for introverts. Think about it. Introverts may enjoy spending time with others (I do), but we need time to recharge in solitude after sustained social encounters. And what is parenting if not one long, continuous, sustained social encounter? (With a tiny person who is often irrational, non-verbal, immune to compromise, and deaf to cues that usually signal the need for the interaction to end soon, no less.)

I was reminded of this negative aspect of introversion on Friday. We spent more than six hours at church, first in the regular three-hour service and then enjoying (and partly orchestrating) a congregational Christmas party. It was very festive and I certainly enjoyed myself, but by the time we got home I just wanted to be in a dark, quiet room by myself so I could recuperate from all the interaction that can be so draining for introverts.

And that's all I have for you this week. I spent three whole mornings in UAE government ministries this week (Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday, Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, and the SDNR on Wednesdsay) so I wasn't able to click on all the good stuff out there.

Thursday, December 08, 2011

YOU GUYS. I thought the glory days of self-righteous arguments about the immodesty of one-strap backpacks were over. Turns out, they're alive and well, at least at BYU-Idaho, but they've moved on to skinny jeans. Behold.

That article at once fills me with indignation and glee. Indignation, because who the HECK FIRE does that guy think he is, treating Miss Rachel Vermillion like that? It must have been humiliating.

And then glee, because I am thoroughly enjoying the firestorm that has erupted around this incident, but only because most people (even the Mormons!) are saying that Miss Vermillion should have been able to take her test. I'm glad to know there are still right-minded individuals out there.

Gosh, there is so much more to say:

- Pants show the shape of your legs, pretty much no matter what. Sorry, that's how it is.

- I can't believe I have now experienced James 1:6 being applied to skinny jeans. Again, I have a love/hate relationship with this (love, because it is just so crazy, and hate, for the same reason).

- I am really trying to hold back on judging the male employee but he sure seems like a jerk. I would love to hear his side of the story, like maybe he had a quota for the number of women he had to turn away and it was getting late? Ha ha.

- In my days at the BYU, we mostly heard complaints from the men about being turned away from the Testing Center for too much facial hair. I guess times have changed.

- I swear I heard a story once about when jeans were not allowed at the BYU (yes, really) and a woman wearing them was denied entry to the Testing Center. So she took off her jeans and buttoned up her long coat and went in to take her test like that. If true, that is AWESOME.

Sorry if this post didn't make sense to anyone who is not a Mormon. I have class in 20 minutes so I didn't have time to explain, but I really wanted to get this particular piece of hilarity out there.

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

For almost a year now, I've been attempting to capture that most elusive prey, the Certificate of Degree Equivalency from the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Abu Dhabi. Basically, I need the UAE to recognize that I came by my BA honestly, and certify said fact to the American University of Sharjah, so I can continue to study for my master's degree. AUS has kindly granted two or three extensions for me to keep working on the process, because like I said, it's taken me almost a year. SO FAR - I'm not even done.

Anyway, this post is not about that whole process. If you're relieved to hear that, sorry, because a post about that whole process is coming, soon. Today, I'm going to tell you about an unexpected hiccup in the process, a mere blip on the radar of the hunt for the Certificate of Degree Equivalency, a single morning in the year of my quest.

The Ministry of Higher Education in Abu Dhabi said that there was an additional, unexpected hoop for me to jump through, and that was a visit to the bowels of the Sharjah Directorate of Naturalisation and Residency. Why? Well, to prove that this is my first period of residency in the UAE, of course! I'm sure it's really obvious why I would need that information in order to get a master's degree here, so I won't even bother explaining. Ahem.

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

I read the Gulf News online a few times a week, and the headlines there don't refresh in any systematic way. Sometimes old stories stay up there for a week or two and are then replaced with a slew of new stuff all at once (in its physical form, it's a daily paper, so I'm not sure why the online version is so irregular). I thought that's what was going on when I kept seeing all these headlines about little kids falling to their deaths from high-rise buildings. I honestly believed it was all one article about one kid who fell out of a window a few weeks ago.

I guess this is Dubai's version of swimming pool deaths (which I don't hear much about, by the way, though it does happen occasionally). So sad. When we lived in Cairo in a sixth-floor apartment with a balcony, the girls weren't allowed on it unless Jeremy or I was RIGHT. THERE. Even then, I always got the heebie jeebies if they got too close to the railings. At times I felt like I was being too vigilant, but now I'm glad I was. So sad.

Monday, December 05, 2011

Winter is almost here. For many of you, that means below-freezing temperatures, snow, and maybe even some school cancellations. Others of you have been dealing with that stuff for weeks now.

For those of us in the UAE, winter means that we all participate in the charade that it is cold now. We do this by wearing sweaters and occasionally scarves and sometimes even a coat (!), especially in the mornings. This morning, Magdalena rode her bike to school wearing short sleeves and shorts. Somehow, it felt wrong to have her do that in December, so I put a jacket on her for show. Never mind that it was probably about 80 degrees outside, or close to it.

Still, I eat up this season of reduced temperatures. I've paid careful attention to all four seasons and I don't think it's as bad as some people would have had us believe before we moved here. We heard all kinds of horror stories, such as the legend that there are only two seasons here: summer, and really really hot summer.

The truth is that it's very nice weather here (in my opinion) for a good seven months. From about 15 October to 15 May, the weather does not adversely affect the business of your daily life (read: it's not so hot that you physically cannot walk around outside). And really, that's about as much as you can ask of a place. Consider: the non-brutal-wintery season of Ithaca lasted a similar length.

So I'm happy to have my seven months of gorgeous weather, even if it doesn't come with all the visual cues (or even the very low temperatures) of deep winter. And now if you see me wearing a sweater when it's 80 degrees outside, you'll know why.

Friday, December 02, 2011

It's possible that I'm as irrationally, fantastically upset about people who complain about babies crying on airplanes as those people are about...well, babies crying on airplanes. Here's a perspective from The Economist (and I'd like to highlight FP's lovely use of the term "uncontrollable rogue states of travel" to describe said crying babies).

I loved this: a Google Earth puzzle. I only got 5/25 correct but the fun was in the journey, not the score.

Thursday, December 01, 2011

Another November, another NaBloPoMo done. I made it through all thirty days, but I came pretty close to not posting on two or three of them. I pre-posted (had Blogger automatically publish a post) on two days while we were camping in the Empty Quarter. I also almost consider the post I wrote about Bilingual Education to be cheating, since it was more to help me study than to contribute meaningful content to the blog.

So really, I think NaBloPoMo was easier than ever for me this year, even with my sometimes loaded schedule. Living in a foreign country provides endless fodder for blog posts, I guess. There's always something I can say about this crazy place called the UAE.

The truth is that I love NaBloPoMo more for what I get than what I give. I love reading blog updates from many friends who don't post regularly during the rest of the year. I also get to read my parents' blogs, which is nice because I get to hear stories I've never heard before. I don't think there was ever a day where I lacked for something good to read on my Google Reader queue. Thanks, everyone.

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We've been in and out of Russia, the Middle East, and the United States since 2001, with one summer at the Middlebury Arabic School in Vermont. We used to live in Tucson and also spent one glorious year in Upstate New York. Current adventure: Sharjah, UAE.